Blog of a course that allows students to learn how to use books, newspapers, magazines, journals, archives, databases, and the Internet to find and evaluate information on legendary creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptids. It also encourages the developement of critical thinking skills to deal with extraordinary claims and ideas for thinking about them.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The Late Great Grover Krantz

Grover Krantz was an anthropologists who taught at Washington State University from 1968 to 1998. His specialized in all aspects human evolution, but he is mostly remembered for his Sasquatch research. He began his research in 1963, and continued until his death in 2002. I checked out a couple books by him, Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence and The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominoids. I find them to be incredibly informational and from a very scientific standpoint, that is he makes logical hypotheses based on undeniable and unbiased facts.

The bulk of Krantz's research on Sasquatch was in his plaster cast collection, which in 1992 (when Bigfoot Sasquatch evidence was published) consisted of 81 footprints, and few handprints. Most of them he obtained through his own fieldwork, and many of them were copied from previous researches like John Green and Bob Titmus. He stated that his collection represented 22 individual Sasquatches. Of those twenty-two, only two were not found in the Pacific Northwest, and many in very remote places. John Green's and Bob Titmus' collection is thought to represent 20 additional individual Sasquatches. By closely analyzing these prints, Krantz was able to completely rule out the possibility that these giant footprints could be fake.

One of the most convincing pieces of evidence for authenticity is found in a large majority of his collection. In these casts you can see a pressure ridge formed near the middle of the print, behind the ball of the foot, where dirt/mud/sand was pushed back after the Sasquatch lifted its back heal and pushed forward with the front of its foot. These is clear evidence that the foot that made the print was flexible, ruling out the possibility of someone strapping on giant 18 inch wood-carved feet and waking around, which is the most common form of hoaxing. Other proof includes dramatically different toe positions within the same track of footprints. For example, in a line of tracks Krantz discovered in a muddy area, one print shows how the front toes splayed out to stop the individual from sliding when walking down a hill. Also, on ten of his casts you can clearly make out skin detail, which was pressed into the ground when the Sasquatch made the track. For hoaxers to pull off these prints, a very elaborate fake foot would be needed, and lots of them. Another thing to take into consideration is the amount of weight needed to make these large prints is well over 400 pounds, and the stride length in most cases is far beyond human normalcy.

Krantz also does a great deal of analysis on the Patterson-Gimlin film, but I can go into that in greater detail in another post.